8 ms·

how do you 'accurately' speak English in ancient Rome?

23 points by rntn 2y ago

mpalmer 2y ago
This is less a response to the piece than the inciting thread(s) on X. Successful art doesn't have to be accurate. Successful entertainment even less so! It's super telling that you get people essentially complaining about AAVE like it's an existential issue for the movie, but silence on any other anachronisms not related to race. Denzel played a great Macbeth in the recent Joel Coen movie, despite not once being Scottish. Acting!
- AmericanChopper 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - netsharc 2y ago
    It requires more suspension of disbelief, but as a bonus, it makes it easy to spot the bigoted Karens moaning about "DEI ruining muh entertainment!".
    - AmericanChopper 2y ago
      This is exactly the sort of dumb reactionary politics that I don’t want in my life. People can make a movie with a black Roman emperor if they want to, but I prefer my entertainment to not be somebody’s political soapbox. Especially for an ideological that demands I must agree with it or be labeled a “bigoted Karen” (or any number of other worse things).
      - kanbara 2y ago
        fwiw almost everything is political, not just things you disagree with
      - netsharc 2y ago
        I think you're free to take your money and buy the entertainment you prefer. Is it political soapboxing, or trying to make show business fairer? Because if Hollywood listened to your preferences, minority actors have less oppportunities for roles. I was watching "A Gentleman in Moscow", a series about an aristocrat living in house arrest in a luxury hotel in 1920s-1950s Soviet Russia. Everyone in it spoke English since it is an US/UK production, and there were black and Indian actors in it, I guess because of "DEI". I found it awkward at first, but I thought "I guess this is progress, better get with the times.". No one moaned about all the Russian characters speaking English, the show didn't have any race-related topics (a movie about the KKK with black Klan members would be incongrous), but with actors of different color skin? That series had lots of IMDb reviews complaining about "political soapboxing"... I must be one of those people^W sheep who don't mind being oppressed by the woke-mafia, huh? As an addendum, I find it obnoxious if people insist straight actors can't play gay characters, or genteel actors playing Jewish characters. It's called fucking acting! Scarlett Johansson should've been able to play a fictional Japanese cyborg in Ghost in the Shell without idiots complaining about it...
        hot_gril 2y ago
        "I think you're free to take your money and buy the entertainment you prefer" doesn't really jive with "I guess this is progress, better get with the times" or "Scarlett Johansson should've been able to play a fictional Japanese cyborg in Ghost in the Shell without idiots complaining about it"
        netsharc 2y ago
        I didn't sulk and stop watching that series even though the black/Indian Russians were awkward for me in the beginning (ooh let's cancel me, I'm admitting the sight of minority actors was awkward for me), and I didn't care about "white-washing" and I didn't boycott Ghost in the Shell.
        hot_gril 2y ago
        I disliked the ATLA movie before even seeing it because most of the characters didn't look like the original. This isn't some moral stance, there is simply such a thing as bad casting in a live adaptation. The movie sucked for plenty of other reasons of course, but even if it didn't, this would've detracted from it. Idk if anyone was actually not watching the Ghost in the Shell remake over the casting. The characters look right. If someone out there is upset that the main character wasn't played by someone Japanese, I don't get it, the original character didn't even look Japanese.
      - mpalmer 2y ago
        > This is exactly the sort of dumb reactionary politics that I don’t want in my life Hey, that's what I thought when I read your comment! What about the fact that the treatment of women and slaves is almost certainly significantly toned down from what we know to be the reality? Also there was almost certainly way more gay sex going on among any number of historical personages. Commodus (Gladiator's main villain) in particular was said to have "defil[ed] every part of his body in dealings with persons of either sex." Where is your outrage at this lack of accurate representation? The implication here is that it's really your own baggage that ruins the immersion for you. You suggest that you can't watch a movie now without cataloguing and mourning the places where a character was more likely in your opinion to be white, male and/or straight. This is not something anyone can help you with. White actors have dominated in Hollywood since the beginning, and I don't remember anybody complaining that Mickey Rooney's character in Breakfast at Tiffany's ruined the immersion. Or that literally all of the ethnic Asian characters in the Manchurian Candidate were played by white actors.
      - ewhanley 2y ago
        Could there ever be an instance not motivated by politics where a black actor portrayed a white character? Not everything everyone does is virtue signaling or politically motivated, but we have somehow arrived at a place culturally where the perception is that a huge fraction of the population is making decisions disingenuously. It's such a coarse and dismissive heuristic.
        AmericanChopper 2y ago
        I thought Idris Elba would have been an excellent James Bond. The alternative they went with doesn’t leave much room for interpretation on its DEI-ness though.
        mpalmer 2y ago
        Literally all that happened was they gave a black woman the 007 designation. They didn't announce her as the new "Bond", and she is not confirmed to continue the character. She didn't even have that designation at the end of the movie. It's literally a number. How eager are you to find things to be mad at?
        netsharc 2y ago
        Sibling comment hits the mark, IMO.
  - jaredwiener 2y ago
    FTA (or at least a link in it) - Macrinus was born in Africa. https://www.worldhistory.org/Macrinus/ https://www.worldhistory.org/Macrinus/
    - linearrust 2y ago
      > FTA (or at least a link in it) - Macrinus was born in Africa. Just because he was born in africa doesn't mean he is black or 'african'. Elon Musk was born in africa too but nobody would claim he is a black man.
      - mpalmer 2y ago
        How would you defend against an accusation that you seem to prefer the historically accurate version of events that allows for the most white characters?
    - AmericanChopper 2y ago
      Lots of Romans were born in Africa, Rome conquered North Africa towards the end of the republic era.
      - hot_gril 2y ago
        Yeah but it also says "Macrinus was a Moor by birth."
        AmericanChopper 2y ago
        Macrinus was descended from Berbers, who generally consider themselves to be white. Moor is what christians called Muslim North Africans, a concept that was neither an ethnicity, nor in existence at the time of Macrinus' birth.
        hot_gril 2y ago
        Moor is accurate here because Macrinus was born in Mauretania. No relation to the much later "Moors" of Muslim North Africa, or to the modern nation of Mauritania. I don't know what the Mauri looked like, but probably not like Italians, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them had dark skin. The same website thinks that emperor looked like this: https://www.worldhistory.org/image/13005/macrinus-facial-reconstruction/ https://www.worldhistory.org/image/13005/macrinus-facial-rec... and if so, Denzel Washington's portrayal looks pretty good https://i0.wp.com/www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/g2-denzel2.jpg?fit=990%2C557&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07... This doesn't look like the Netflix African Cleopatra situation. She was Greek IRL, which is actually interesting for anyone who didn't know about the Ptolemaic dynasty, and it's relevant because even today the Coptic minority in Egypt is (sorta) Greek.
  - thruway516 2y ago
    This is a thoroughly nonsensical take. What is 'white' is very arbitrary in the first place. Where ancient Romans 'white'? Does it make it any more accurate to have an Englishman play an ancient roman than to have an Arabian or Japanese man? How about the debates over the historical portrayal of Jesus, a semitic man, as a blue-eyed Scandinavian. You're simply wedded to the hollywood convention which has nothing to do with logic or historical accuracy. Those conventions reflect the current culture and can change at any time. So it was the fashion before to use certain type of actors because the Hollywood elite decided those are the people audiences would be most comfortable with (not because it had anything to do with being accurate). And now demographics of audiences have changed so Hollywood has (slowly) adapted. It's just entertainment not Truth. Get with the times.
    - slothtrop 2y ago
      > Where ancient Romans 'white'? The Scottish in 1600s were. Not to say it matters, as Macbeth is a quasi-fantasy play and it's been adapted a million times. At this point "black everything Macbeth" might draw more viewers than "just another fucking Macbeth" (maybe, idk but producers may have a better idea). The question is always "who is this for" and "will people pay to see it"
      - thruway516 2y ago
        Well that's ironic. You do know many of Shakespeare's plays were adapted from elsewhere outside of England or Scotland. So Shakespeare would've been committing the same sins you're all getting twisted about by having Englishmen play characters called 'Malveolo' and 'Othello' and 'Titus Andronicus' etc. I'm really not understanding this slavish devotion to the skin color and ethnicity of who plays fictional characters.
        slothtrop 2y ago
        Not really. You can transpose a plot and/or create something based on another work with the freedom to do anything you want (see: Throne of Blood, based on MacBeth), and people will be singing your praises generations later. If conversely you take on the original name, script, characters, historical setting, aesthetic, etc collectively as if to approximate high faithfulness to the original work (one that is not genre fantasy), then putting a brazen change front-and-center (like a black Scottish king) sticks out. It will draw more attention than anything else, and maybe that's the point. There are a ton of Macbeth adaptations, they're not super-duper cheap to make, and they often lose money. It's just an artistic/stylistic judgement, not a complaint (very few readers here are likely to go see another in the pile of Macbeth movies). A modern day adaptation even with all the original names and dialog would still work better. I don't have a horse in the race because I don't care to see yet another Macbeth.
  - kanbara 2y ago
    maybe look at it outside of the lens that you want everything to be like you, and realise there are billions of people who bring their own talent and culture to roles, most of whom are not white. gay and black people exist, and the people they are portraying are dead. it’s called acting for that reason, the character isnt really cleopatra.
  - extr 2y ago
    There is a time and place for demographic accuracy. If you are shooting some kind of historical reenactment I can see the argument it enhances immersion (or at very least, doesn't break immersion) to use actors that fit the demographic of the group being portrayed. I can also see an exception for historical figures that have a widely known image (eg: I could buy that it would be little jarring to see Denzel Washington play George Washington). However, most "historical" films are not historical reenactments. They are usually character dramas that are using a historical period as a backdrop to tell some other type of story. For me personally I see this more in the tradition of live theater. If the race (or even gender) of the characters isn't massively integral to the plot, it's fine and good to cast whoever acts well in the role. Cleopatra and the little mermaid are literally fairly tale characters, could not imagine caring what the race of the actress playing them is.
    - AmericanChopper 2y ago
      > There is a time and place for demographic accuracy. If you are shooting some kind of historical reenactment I can see the argument it enhances immersion Of course, and I can’t say I ever noticed the race or gender of characters until recently. If movies/TV were was always just equally non-accurate then it would be fine, but that’s not how entertainment works. A man can be replaced by a woman or a transgender, a white character can be replaced by a non-white actor, and anybody can be made gay/bi/++. But the reverse is never allowed. It’s not some insane conspiracy theory either, these are basically the new rules of film making. https://www.oscars.org/awards/representation-and-inclusion-standards https://www.oscars.org/awards/representation-and-inclusion-s... For people that are aligned with this political agenda, I’m sure it’s good for them. But I’m personally just not interested, and I think there’s quite a few people out there with the same views as me on this.
      - mpalmer 2y ago
        I'm fascinated to know what you think of Mickey Rooney's performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Or the travesty of yellowface that is the flashback sequence in the Manchurian Candidate.
  - slothtrop 2y ago
    Macbeth is fiction, albeit written long ago. Even so, I think some approaches to modern adaptation are better than others. For instance, you can go the route of Throne of Blood. It transposes the plot to feudal Japan, and doesn't call itself Macbeth. This allows you to hit all the story beats with the freedom to change literally anything else you want, and still be "faithful" in its adaptation. I'd argue it's also a more intriguing approach for film. Alternatively, you can opt for the original dialog, names, historical setting, and aesthetic. If you go this way, with a story set in Medieval Scotland that is not genre fantasy, then having something as incongruent as a change of race in the main character will stick out. Notwithstanding, here no one cares because a) Macbeth's been done to death, b) no one gives a damn about Macbeth. You can of course suggest that people are nonplussed about this for movies in general, but if they aren't invested in any way they may not see your film either. So in fact you aren't likely to see this done for every film set in a historical period all the time, and the minor controversy and trolling if anything helps create buzz for a film that will otherwise flop anyway. Were you going to see it in theaters? Statistically, not likely.
    - mpalmer 2y ago
      Gladiator is fiction that is extremely loosely based on historical people and events. Gladiator 2 must necessarily be even more inaccurate if it maintains continuity with the first movie. Ridley Scott is on record as being extremely exasperated with historians when it comes to his historical films. So I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. > a) Macbeth's been done to death > b) no one gives a damn about Macbeth These are very bizarre claims you make very confidently. I don't see how both of these aren't equally applicable to Gladiator 2, the sequel(!) to one of the worst Best Picture winners in history. > So in fact you aren't likely to see this done for every film set in a historical period all the time, and the minor controversy and trolling if anything helps create buzz for a film that will otherwise flop anyway. Were you going to see it in theaters? Statistically, not likely. So... what are you saying exactly? It was fine to make Macbeth black because no one was going to see it anyway? It was a good idea to make Macbeth black because controversy? The clearest point you are making is that you cannot see outside your own point of view when it comes to race in cinema.
  - patates 2y ago
    Sorry that you had to discover that there are different kinds of people with different preferences! Also, how people started to use "being woke" (alert to racial prejudice and discrimination) and "DEI" (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) as swear words is beyond me.
    - slothtrop 2y ago
      Probably because it's a loaded (and incidentally no longer useful) term that conveys more than that. As explained well by deBoer here https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what-woke-means https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiede...
    - netsharc 2y ago
      Seeing DEI as a slur depresses me. On Instagram in the comments of videos of Trump getting shot, there are so many it's due to the SS having female members, which they conclude is because of DEI. It makes me want to ask Putin to just launch those nukes already...
      - linearrust 2y ago
        > It makes me want to ask Putin to just launch those nukes already... What's with accounts here wanting Putin to use nukes all of a sudden? 'If I could have one wish it would be for Putin to nuke Warsaw.' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051619 It is some meme I'm not getting? Bizarre.
        netsharc 2y ago
        A coincidence? Before this war I've said "Kim Jong-Un has my permission to nuke X"...
        amiga386 2y ago
        It's an older meme but it checks out, sir. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slough_(poem) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slough_(poem) Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death!
  - jawilson2 2y ago
    Like Hamilton. Total bomb.
- pessimizer 2y ago
  The worst part of this is that it writes racism out of history, and leaves young people with bizarre, unrealistic impressions of the past. It leaves them without the tools to understand their racist experience and environment in the present, which can be nothing but a comfort to racists. If you're doing an artistic thing, fine. But I'm really getting sick of virulently racist eras being portrayed by a multiracial cast becoming standard. 20 years from now, young people may not even understand what the problem was, never having seen a depiction of racism, and watching black Scottish kings, while the descendants of slaves will still be living in the gutter with about the same wealth that we were released from the plantations with: zero.
  - runako 2y ago
    > 20 years from now If racism is a 'was' in 20 years, I would be happy to take the win.
- marginalia_nu 2y ago
  I think what people are really looking for when they say they want accuracy or realism in media is actually depth and coherent world building.
ilamont 2y ago
The HBO series Rome handled it well. People of noble birth used RP, plebeians had middle-class accents and soldiers tended to have working-class accents from the southeast. Foreign slaves had a mix of foreign accents. IIRC Game of Thrones took a similar approach for noble families and the rabble of Lannisport, but leaned more heavily on northern accents for people from northern regions. I don't recall American accents in Rome, but there may have been some in GoT. If the story is good and the acting and characterizations are top-notch, it doesn't matter IMHO.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  The game of thrones accents are pretty cringe though, leaning way too hard on the "dark featured eastern beauty with an unintelligible accent" trope whenever there is a brothel scene. I'm glad they realized this was stupid and had Myseria unceremoniously drop much of her fake accent for Season 2 House of the Dragon.
  - wongarsu 2y ago
    As someone from a country where brothels are legal I can assure you being cringe is very on-brand for brothels. The rich people of Westeros just all have a fetish for the exotic
    - mystified5016 2y ago
      When your entire world is essentially one medieval continent, anything even pretending to be exotic has to be pretty exciting.
    - kjkjadksj 2y ago
      I don't think they were doing it for a deep lore reason. Lets consider going from season 1 to season 2 in the shows chronology. It represents a gap of maybe 2 weeks, and in that time they gave Jacaerys 8 inch longer hair with a perm.
- ttepasse 2y ago
  Apropos Rome, there is the other semi-recent roman series, Spartacus, which obviously isn’t on the niveau of Rome, concentrating more on violence and nudity. But it did something very interesting with the language, making it through vocabulary far more archaic sounding, and as this blog post argues possibly somewhat "latin": http://bachae.blogspot.com/2012/02/language-of-spartacus.html http://bachae.blogspot.com/2012/02/language-of-spartacus.htm... (Don’t know if that’s true; back in school I wrongly chose French instead of Latin as a third language. Maybe someone else knows more.)
orange_joe 2y ago
the Chernobyl miniseries handled accents perfectly. Ostensibly in Russia it had everyone speaking English accents. The educated spoke in RP, but the miners spoke with working class regional British accents. It added a lot of texture to the show.
- jjtheblunt 2y ago
  What is RP?
  - darreninthenet 2y ago
    Received Pronunciation - like a BBC newspeaker from the 1950s
    - echelon 2y ago
      This is really useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h09RqgrDgv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h09RqgrDgv4
      - jjtheblunt 2y ago
        Thanks (both)
      - RichardCA 2y ago
        I've often wondered if Monty Python was just doing a big meta-parody of RP. That is, you speak like a proper Oxford man while also being absurd, and the comedy almost writes itself. https://youtu.be/ZArgEvK2R1s https://youtu.be/ZArgEvK2R1s
        amiga386 2y ago
        Monty Python were mostly making fun of the BBC; the BBC at the time had very stiff and paternalistic presenters. It's why the BBC had the nickname "Auntie", after your old-fashioned Auntie who know's what's best for you. I think the requirement that they must speak RP had ended by the 1960s, but the BBC still had a lot of programmes and presenters with that schtick. Here's an example from 1968: https://youtu.be/GwRRSJ_wtIg?t=152 https://youtu.be/GwRRSJ_wtIg?t=152 They do make fun of the upper class speech in e.g. Woody and Tinny Words https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3-51DhOzHE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3-51DhOzHE In terms of comedy, a lot of what Monty Python did had already been done in the 1950s by The Goon Show - the surreal situations, the funny voices, the silly noises; Python were massive fans of the Goons, and to their credit, the Pythons were able to bring that energy to television in a way that the Goons couldn't.
lo_zamoyski 2y ago
RP English wasn't always used for Romans in Hollywood. But given that you're speaking English, not Latin, demanding "accuracy" is a category mistake. It's a matter of analogy: which English dialect today is most fitting, by analogy? RP English has a certain perception in the US, but is it really the best accent in our times? The British Empire is gone, and did not rule the US. The American Empire, though hurtling fast toward extinction, is a sensible analogue. So some variety of American English seems fitting, and in general, an English language American movie will need to translate into American linguistic categories. For example, among Romans, you can vary dialects based on social class, ethnic origin, and so on. But that's if you want analogical accuracy, and that kind of accuracy can work well when the subject matter of Rome is used as an occasion to critique our society.
amiga386 2y ago
It's an interesting question. If you want "historical accuracy", you would have the actors speak in Latin or Greek, but these days I'm not sure it'd find an audience. The only place you're likely to find spoken Latin is ecclesiasticly. So your show's in English but not set in England, what accent should you have? For quite a while, I'd have said "what native speakers from that area sound like when trying to speak English"... But when I watched the HBO Chernobyl mini-series, they had a different approach. All the various Russian, Ukrainian, etc. accents were instead regional English accents. And that was pretty good, because, honestly, as someone who doesn't speak any Slavic languages, I can't easily tell the differences between them, and I'd miss the implicit cultural and social judgements the speakers make of each other. But I know exactly how an RP speaker looks down on an Estuary English speaker who in turn looks down on a Yorkshireman or Scotsman. By using my own country's accents, the narcissism of small differences comes through loud and clear. The accompanying podcast said they did it to make the actors "act their roles and not their accents". But it is a balancing act - do you want the versimilitude of having people sound like they're from the place on-screen (while still speaking English)? Or do you want the nuances of language translated properly for you? In purely fantasy worlds, there's no reason why elves speak RP, dwarves speak Scots and orcs speak Cockney... if anything, the dwarves should speak Old Norse! On a final note, watch the British take the piss out of those self-serving Hollywood movies where they have Americans play the heroes despite their country not existing until several centuries later (and of course giving the baddies British accents): Jerry Brickhammer presents "The Crusades", the movie in honour of all the Americans who died in the early middle ages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbzlUQwaC4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbzlUQwaC4Q
- schroeding 2y ago
  > If you want "historical accuracy", you would have the actors speak in Latin or Greek, but these days I'm not sure it'd find an audience I think Barbarians had quite a bit of viewers on Netflix, right? I can highly, highly recommend the latin-german version[1] of season 1 - even though the Barbarians wouldn't have spoken modern German, it's still superb! [1] sneak-peak: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ojC-zTXSAsY https://youtube.com/watch?v=ojC-zTXSAsY
arduanika 2y ago
I've always wanted to see whether it would work to have a story where the Romans speak with US accents and the Greeks speak with UK accents, being all properly educated and cultured and so forth. But maybe it's so normalized to think that Romans in movies should speak like Brits that it wouldn't work.
- hot_gril 2y ago
  It's so rare that anyone has an American accent in any American movie set in a non-English-speaking country. Usually they're either British or idk, some fake Spanish-like accent.
hot_gril 2y ago
This reminds me of the scene in Toy Story where Buzz Lightyear starts speaking Spanish instead of English. There are two official Spanish dialect dubs of the movie, where he speaks the same language but has a different accent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDZcycnhni0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDZcycnhni0
thrwyexecbrain 2y ago
For me, someone from outside the Anglosphere, the British Empire is a distant and unfamiliar concept. I am always bothered by characters in historical fiction speaking with a British accent just to make an impression of ancientness. The antiquity was not ancient back then -- it was modern for its contemporaries. Rome was as much the dominant economic, cultural and military power of the ancient world as the US is of the present. I would actually prefer American accents being used in movies set in the Roman Empire.
paxys 2y ago
I have found that the only way to live a sane life these days is to just ignore all the culture warriors who show up and start the same tired fight every day. "XYZ should/shouldn't be black/white/asian/gay/straight/trans/irish/accented/disabled/male/female/young/old/tall..." I don't care. If the movie looks interesting to me I'll buy a ticket. You should do the same. Regular people spend way too much time and energy jumping into the pointless debates for no reason thinking they will fix everything, but only amplify the idiocy by giving it attention.

23 points by rntn 2y ago

This is less a response to the piece than the inciting thread(s) on X. Successful art doesn't have to be accurate. Successful entertainment even less so! It's super telling that you get people essentially complaining about AAVE like it's an existential issue for the movie, but silence on any other anachronisms not related to race. Denzel played a great Macbeth in the recent Joel Coen movie, despite not once being Scottish. Acting!

AmericanChopper 2y ago
[flagged]
- netsharc 2y ago
  It requires more suspension of disbelief, but as a bonus, it makes it easy to spot the bigoted Karens moaning about "DEI ruining muh entertainment!".
  - AmericanChopper 2y ago
    This is exactly the sort of dumb reactionary politics that I don’t want in my life. People can make a movie with a black Roman emperor if they want to, but I prefer my entertainment to not be somebody’s political soapbox. Especially for an ideological that demands I must agree with it or be labeled a “bigoted Karen” (or any number of other worse things).
    - kanbara 2y ago
      fwiw almost everything is political, not just things you disagree with
    - netsharc 2y ago
      I think you're free to take your money and buy the entertainment you prefer. Is it political soapboxing, or trying to make show business fairer? Because if Hollywood listened to your preferences, minority actors have less oppportunities for roles. I was watching "A Gentleman in Moscow", a series about an aristocrat living in house arrest in a luxury hotel in 1920s-1950s Soviet Russia. Everyone in it spoke English since it is an US/UK production, and there were black and Indian actors in it, I guess because of "DEI". I found it awkward at first, but I thought "I guess this is progress, better get with the times.". No one moaned about all the Russian characters speaking English, the show didn't have any race-related topics (a movie about the KKK with black Klan members would be incongrous), but with actors of different color skin? That series had lots of IMDb reviews complaining about "political soapboxing"... I must be one of those people^W sheep who don't mind being oppressed by the woke-mafia, huh? As an addendum, I find it obnoxious if people insist straight actors can't play gay characters, or genteel actors playing Jewish characters. It's called fucking acting! Scarlett Johansson should've been able to play a fictional Japanese cyborg in Ghost in the Shell without idiots complaining about it...
      - hot_gril 2y ago
        "I think you're free to take your money and buy the entertainment you prefer" doesn't really jive with "I guess this is progress, better get with the times" or "Scarlett Johansson should've been able to play a fictional Japanese cyborg in Ghost in the Shell without idiots complaining about it"
        netsharc 2y ago
        I didn't sulk and stop watching that series even though the black/Indian Russians were awkward for me in the beginning (ooh let's cancel me, I'm admitting the sight of minority actors was awkward for me), and I didn't care about "white-washing" and I didn't boycott Ghost in the Shell.
        hot_gril 2y ago
        I disliked the ATLA movie before even seeing it because most of the characters didn't look like the original. This isn't some moral stance, there is simply such a thing as bad casting in a live adaptation. The movie sucked for plenty of other reasons of course, but even if it didn't, this would've detracted from it. Idk if anyone was actually not watching the Ghost in the Shell remake over the casting. The characters look right. If someone out there is upset that the main character wasn't played by someone Japanese, I don't get it, the original character didn't even look Japanese.
    - mpalmer 2y ago
      > This is exactly the sort of dumb reactionary politics that I don’t want in my life Hey, that's what I thought when I read your comment! What about the fact that the treatment of women and slaves is almost certainly significantly toned down from what we know to be the reality? Also there was almost certainly way more gay sex going on among any number of historical personages. Commodus (Gladiator's main villain) in particular was said to have "defil[ed] every part of his body in dealings with persons of either sex." Where is your outrage at this lack of accurate representation? The implication here is that it's really your own baggage that ruins the immersion for you. You suggest that you can't watch a movie now without cataloguing and mourning the places where a character was more likely in your opinion to be white, male and/or straight. This is not something anyone can help you with. White actors have dominated in Hollywood since the beginning, and I don't remember anybody complaining that Mickey Rooney's character in Breakfast at Tiffany's ruined the immersion. Or that literally all of the ethnic Asian characters in the Manchurian Candidate were played by white actors.
    - ewhanley 2y ago
      Could there ever be an instance not motivated by politics where a black actor portrayed a white character? Not everything everyone does is virtue signaling or politically motivated, but we have somehow arrived at a place culturally where the perception is that a huge fraction of the population is making decisions disingenuously. It's such a coarse and dismissive heuristic.
      - AmericanChopper 2y ago
        I thought Idris Elba would have been an excellent James Bond. The alternative they went with doesn’t leave much room for interpretation on its DEI-ness though.
        mpalmer 2y ago
        Literally all that happened was they gave a black woman the 007 designation. They didn't announce her as the new "Bond", and she is not confirmed to continue the character. She didn't even have that designation at the end of the movie. It's literally a number. How eager are you to find things to be mad at?
        netsharc 2y ago
        Sibling comment hits the mark, IMO.
- jaredwiener 2y ago
  FTA (or at least a link in it) - Macrinus was born in Africa. https://www.worldhistory.org/Macrinus/ https://www.worldhistory.org/Macrinus/
  - linearrust 2y ago
    > FTA (or at least a link in it) - Macrinus was born in Africa. Just because he was born in africa doesn't mean he is black or 'african'. Elon Musk was born in africa too but nobody would claim he is a black man.
    - mpalmer 2y ago
      How would you defend against an accusation that you seem to prefer the historically accurate version of events that allows for the most white characters?
  - AmericanChopper 2y ago
    Lots of Romans were born in Africa, Rome conquered North Africa towards the end of the republic era.
    - hot_gril 2y ago
      Yeah but it also says "Macrinus was a Moor by birth."
      - AmericanChopper 2y ago
        Macrinus was descended from Berbers, who generally consider themselves to be white. Moor is what christians called Muslim North Africans, a concept that was neither an ethnicity, nor in existence at the time of Macrinus' birth.
        hot_gril 2y ago
        Moor is accurate here because Macrinus was born in Mauretania. No relation to the much later "Moors" of Muslim North Africa, or to the modern nation of Mauritania. I don't know what the Mauri looked like, but probably not like Italians, and I wouldn't be surprised if some of them had dark skin. The same website thinks that emperor looked like this: https://www.worldhistory.org/image/13005/macrinus-facial-reconstruction/ https://www.worldhistory.org/image/13005/macrinus-facial-rec... and if so, Denzel Washington's portrayal looks pretty good https://i0.wp.com/www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/g2-denzel2.jpg?fit=990%2C557&ssl=1 https://i0.wp.com/www.thewrap.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07... This doesn't look like the Netflix African Cleopatra situation. She was Greek IRL, which is actually interesting for anyone who didn't know about the Ptolemaic dynasty, and it's relevant because even today the Coptic minority in Egypt is (sorta) Greek.
- thruway516 2y ago
  This is a thoroughly nonsensical take. What is 'white' is very arbitrary in the first place. Where ancient Romans 'white'? Does it make it any more accurate to have an Englishman play an ancient roman than to have an Arabian or Japanese man? How about the debates over the historical portrayal of Jesus, a semitic man, as a blue-eyed Scandinavian. You're simply wedded to the hollywood convention which has nothing to do with logic or historical accuracy. Those conventions reflect the current culture and can change at any time. So it was the fashion before to use certain type of actors because the Hollywood elite decided those are the people audiences would be most comfortable with (not because it had anything to do with being accurate). And now demographics of audiences have changed so Hollywood has (slowly) adapted. It's just entertainment not Truth. Get with the times.
  - slothtrop 2y ago
    > Where ancient Romans 'white'? The Scottish in 1600s were. Not to say it matters, as Macbeth is a quasi-fantasy play and it's been adapted a million times. At this point "black everything Macbeth" might draw more viewers than "just another fucking Macbeth" (maybe, idk but producers may have a better idea). The question is always "who is this for" and "will people pay to see it"
    - thruway516 2y ago
      Well that's ironic. You do know many of Shakespeare's plays were adapted from elsewhere outside of England or Scotland. So Shakespeare would've been committing the same sins you're all getting twisted about by having Englishmen play characters called 'Malveolo' and 'Othello' and 'Titus Andronicus' etc. I'm really not understanding this slavish devotion to the skin color and ethnicity of who plays fictional characters.
      - slothtrop 2y ago
        Not really. You can transpose a plot and/or create something based on another work with the freedom to do anything you want (see: Throne of Blood, based on MacBeth), and people will be singing your praises generations later. If conversely you take on the original name, script, characters, historical setting, aesthetic, etc collectively as if to approximate high faithfulness to the original work (one that is not genre fantasy), then putting a brazen change front-and-center (like a black Scottish king) sticks out. It will draw more attention than anything else, and maybe that's the point. There are a ton of Macbeth adaptations, they're not super-duper cheap to make, and they often lose money. It's just an artistic/stylistic judgement, not a complaint (very few readers here are likely to go see another in the pile of Macbeth movies). A modern day adaptation even with all the original names and dialog would still work better. I don't have a horse in the race because I don't care to see yet another Macbeth.
- kanbara 2y ago
  maybe look at it outside of the lens that you want everything to be like you, and realise there are billions of people who bring their own talent and culture to roles, most of whom are not white. gay and black people exist, and the people they are portraying are dead. it’s called acting for that reason, the character isnt really cleopatra.
- extr 2y ago
  There is a time and place for demographic accuracy. If you are shooting some kind of historical reenactment I can see the argument it enhances immersion (or at very least, doesn't break immersion) to use actors that fit the demographic of the group being portrayed. I can also see an exception for historical figures that have a widely known image (eg: I could buy that it would be little jarring to see Denzel Washington play George Washington). However, most "historical" films are not historical reenactments. They are usually character dramas that are using a historical period as a backdrop to tell some other type of story. For me personally I see this more in the tradition of live theater. If the race (or even gender) of the characters isn't massively integral to the plot, it's fine and good to cast whoever acts well in the role. Cleopatra and the little mermaid are literally fairly tale characters, could not imagine caring what the race of the actress playing them is.
  - AmericanChopper 2y ago
    > There is a time and place for demographic accuracy. If you are shooting some kind of historical reenactment I can see the argument it enhances immersion Of course, and I can’t say I ever noticed the race or gender of characters until recently. If movies/TV were was always just equally non-accurate then it would be fine, but that’s not how entertainment works. A man can be replaced by a woman or a transgender, a white character can be replaced by a non-white actor, and anybody can be made gay/bi/++. But the reverse is never allowed. It’s not some insane conspiracy theory either, these are basically the new rules of film making. https://www.oscars.org/awards/representation-and-inclusion-standards https://www.oscars.org/awards/representation-and-inclusion-s... For people that are aligned with this political agenda, I’m sure it’s good for them. But I’m personally just not interested, and I think there’s quite a few people out there with the same views as me on this.
    - mpalmer 2y ago
      I'm fascinated to know what you think of Mickey Rooney's performance in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Or the travesty of yellowface that is the flashback sequence in the Manchurian Candidate.
- slothtrop 2y ago
  Macbeth is fiction, albeit written long ago. Even so, I think some approaches to modern adaptation are better than others. For instance, you can go the route of Throne of Blood. It transposes the plot to feudal Japan, and doesn't call itself Macbeth. This allows you to hit all the story beats with the freedom to change literally anything else you want, and still be "faithful" in its adaptation. I'd argue it's also a more intriguing approach for film. Alternatively, you can opt for the original dialog, names, historical setting, and aesthetic. If you go this way, with a story set in Medieval Scotland that is not genre fantasy, then having something as incongruent as a change of race in the main character will stick out. Notwithstanding, here no one cares because a) Macbeth's been done to death, b) no one gives a damn about Macbeth. You can of course suggest that people are nonplussed about this for movies in general, but if they aren't invested in any way they may not see your film either. So in fact you aren't likely to see this done for every film set in a historical period all the time, and the minor controversy and trolling if anything helps create buzz for a film that will otherwise flop anyway. Were you going to see it in theaters? Statistically, not likely.
  - mpalmer 2y ago
    Gladiator is fiction that is extremely loosely based on historical people and events. Gladiator 2 must necessarily be even more inaccurate if it maintains continuity with the first movie. Ridley Scott is on record as being extremely exasperated with historians when it comes to his historical films. So I'm not quite sure what you're getting at. > a) Macbeth's been done to death > b) no one gives a damn about Macbeth These are very bizarre claims you make very confidently. I don't see how both of these aren't equally applicable to Gladiator 2, the sequel(!) to one of the worst Best Picture winners in history. > So in fact you aren't likely to see this done for every film set in a historical period all the time, and the minor controversy and trolling if anything helps create buzz for a film that will otherwise flop anyway. Were you going to see it in theaters? Statistically, not likely. So... what are you saying exactly? It was fine to make Macbeth black because no one was going to see it anyway? It was a good idea to make Macbeth black because controversy? The clearest point you are making is that you cannot see outside your own point of view when it comes to race in cinema.
- patates 2y ago
  Sorry that you had to discover that there are different kinds of people with different preferences! Also, how people started to use "being woke" (alert to racial prejudice and discrimination) and "DEI" (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) as swear words is beyond me.
  - slothtrop 2y ago
    Probably because it's a loaded (and incidentally no longer useful) term that conveys more than that. As explained well by deBoer here https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/of-course-you-know-what-woke-means https://web.archive.org/web/20230404013504/https://freddiede...
  - netsharc 2y ago
    Seeing DEI as a slur depresses me. On Instagram in the comments of videos of Trump getting shot, there are so many it's due to the SS having female members, which they conclude is because of DEI. It makes me want to ask Putin to just launch those nukes already...
    - linearrust 2y ago
      > It makes me want to ask Putin to just launch those nukes already... What's with accounts here wanting Putin to use nukes all of a sudden? 'If I could have one wish it would be for Putin to nuke Warsaw.' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051619 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41051619 It is some meme I'm not getting? Bizarre.
      - netsharc 2y ago
        A coincidence? Before this war I've said "Kim Jong-Un has my permission to nuke X"...
      - amiga386 2y ago
        It's an older meme but it checks out, sir. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slough_(poem) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slough_(poem) Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough! It isn't fit for humans now, There isn't grass to graze a cow. Swarm over, Death!
- jawilson2 2y ago
  Like Hamilton. Total bomb.
pessimizer 2y ago
The worst part of this is that it writes racism out of history, and leaves young people with bizarre, unrealistic impressions of the past. It leaves them without the tools to understand their racist experience and environment in the present, which can be nothing but a comfort to racists. If you're doing an artistic thing, fine. But I'm really getting sick of virulently racist eras being portrayed by a multiracial cast becoming standard. 20 years from now, young people may not even understand what the problem was, never having seen a depiction of racism, and watching black Scottish kings, while the descendants of slaves will still be living in the gutter with about the same wealth that we were released from the plantations with: zero.
- runako 2y ago
  > 20 years from now If racism is a 'was' in 20 years, I would be happy to take the win.
marginalia_nu 2y ago
I think what people are really looking for when they say they want accuracy or realism in media is actually depth and coherent world building.

ilamont 2y ago

The HBO series Rome handled it well. People of noble birth used RP, plebeians had middle-class accents and soldiers tended to have working-class accents from the southeast. Foreign slaves had a mix of foreign accents. IIRC Game of Thrones took a similar approach for noble families and the rabble of Lannisport, but leaned more heavily on northern accents for people from northern regions. I don't recall American accents in Rome, but there may have been some in GoT. If the story is good and the acting and characterizations are top-notch, it doesn't matter IMHO.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
The game of thrones accents are pretty cringe though, leaning way too hard on the "dark featured eastern beauty with an unintelligible accent" trope whenever there is a brothel scene. I'm glad they realized this was stupid and had Myseria unceremoniously drop much of her fake accent for Season 2 House of the Dragon.
- wongarsu 2y ago
  As someone from a country where brothels are legal I can assure you being cringe is very on-brand for brothels. The rich people of Westeros just all have a fetish for the exotic
  - mystified5016 2y ago
    When your entire world is essentially one medieval continent, anything even pretending to be exotic has to be pretty exciting.
  - kjkjadksj 2y ago
    I don't think they were doing it for a deep lore reason. Lets consider going from season 1 to season 2 in the shows chronology. It represents a gap of maybe 2 weeks, and in that time they gave Jacaerys 8 inch longer hair with a perm.
ttepasse 2y ago
Apropos Rome, there is the other semi-recent roman series, Spartacus, which obviously isn’t on the niveau of Rome, concentrating more on violence and nudity. But it did something very interesting with the language, making it through vocabulary far more archaic sounding, and as this blog post argues possibly somewhat "latin": http://bachae.blogspot.com/2012/02/language-of-spartacus.html http://bachae.blogspot.com/2012/02/language-of-spartacus.htm... (Don’t know if that’s true; back in school I wrongly chose French instead of Latin as a third language. Maybe someone else knows more.)

orange_joe 2y ago

the Chernobyl miniseries handled accents perfectly. Ostensibly in Russia it had everyone speaking English accents. The educated spoke in RP, but the miners spoke with working class regional British accents. It added a lot of texture to the show.

jjtheblunt 2y ago
What is RP?
- darreninthenet 2y ago
  Received Pronunciation - like a BBC newspeaker from the 1950s
  - echelon 2y ago
    This is really useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h09RqgrDgv4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h09RqgrDgv4
    - jjtheblunt 2y ago
      Thanks (both)
    - RichardCA 2y ago
      I've often wondered if Monty Python was just doing a big meta-parody of RP. That is, you speak like a proper Oxford man while also being absurd, and the comedy almost writes itself. https://youtu.be/ZArgEvK2R1s https://youtu.be/ZArgEvK2R1s
      - amiga386 2y ago
        Monty Python were mostly making fun of the BBC; the BBC at the time had very stiff and paternalistic presenters. It's why the BBC had the nickname "Auntie", after your old-fashioned Auntie who know's what's best for you. I think the requirement that they must speak RP had ended by the 1960s, but the BBC still had a lot of programmes and presenters with that schtick. Here's an example from 1968: https://youtu.be/GwRRSJ_wtIg?t=152 https://youtu.be/GwRRSJ_wtIg?t=152 They do make fun of the upper class speech in e.g. Woody and Tinny Words https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3-51DhOzHE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3-51DhOzHE In terms of comedy, a lot of what Monty Python did had already been done in the 1950s by The Goon Show - the surreal situations, the funny voices, the silly noises; Python were massive fans of the Goons, and to their credit, the Pythons were able to bring that energy to television in a way that the Goons couldn't.

lo_zamoyski 2y ago

RP English wasn't always used for Romans in Hollywood. But given that you're speaking English, not Latin, demanding "accuracy" is a category mistake. It's a matter of analogy: which English dialect today is most fitting, by analogy? RP English has a certain perception in the US, but is it really the best accent in our times? The British Empire is gone, and did not rule the US. The American Empire, though hurtling fast toward extinction, is a sensible analogue. So some variety of American English seems fitting, and in general, an English language American movie will need to translate into American linguistic categories. For example, among Romans, you can vary dialects based on social class, ethnic origin, and so on. But that's if you want analogical accuracy, and that kind of accuracy can work well when the subject matter of Rome is used as an occasion to critique our society.

amiga386 2y ago

It's an interesting question. If you want "historical accuracy", you would have the actors speak in Latin or Greek, but these days I'm not sure it'd find an audience. The only place you're likely to find spoken Latin is ecclesiasticly. So your show's in English but not set in England, what accent should you have? For quite a while, I'd have said "what native speakers from that area sound like when trying to speak English"... But when I watched the HBO Chernobyl mini-series, they had a different approach. All the various Russian, Ukrainian, etc. accents were instead regional English accents. And that was pretty good, because, honestly, as someone who doesn't speak any Slavic languages, I can't easily tell the differences between them, and I'd miss the implicit cultural and social judgements the speakers make of each other. But I know exactly how an RP speaker looks down on an Estuary English speaker who in turn looks down on a Yorkshireman or Scotsman. By using my own country's accents, the narcissism of small differences comes through loud and clear. The accompanying podcast said they did it to make the actors "act their roles and not their accents". But it is a balancing act - do you want the versimilitude of having people sound like they're from the place on-screen (while still speaking English)? Or do you want the nuances of language translated properly for you? In purely fantasy worlds, there's no reason why elves speak RP, dwarves speak Scots and orcs speak Cockney... if anything, the dwarves should speak Old Norse! On a final note, watch the British take the piss out of those self-serving Hollywood movies where they have Americans play the heroes despite their country not existing until several centuries later (and of course giving the baddies British accents): Jerry Brickhammer presents "The Crusades", the movie in honour of all the Americans who died in the early middle ages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbzlUQwaC4Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbzlUQwaC4Q

schroeding 2y ago
> If you want "historical accuracy", you would have the actors speak in Latin or Greek, but these days I'm not sure it'd find an audience I think Barbarians had quite a bit of viewers on Netflix, right? I can highly, highly recommend the latin-german version[1] of season 1 - even though the Barbarians wouldn't have spoken modern German, it's still superb! [1] sneak-peak: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ojC-zTXSAsY https://youtube.com/watch?v=ojC-zTXSAsY

arduanika 2y ago

I've always wanted to see whether it would work to have a story where the Romans speak with US accents and the Greeks speak with UK accents, being all properly educated and cultured and so forth. But maybe it's so normalized to think that Romans in movies should speak like Brits that it wouldn't work.

hot_gril 2y ago
It's so rare that anyone has an American accent in any American movie set in a non-English-speaking country. Usually they're either British or idk, some fake Spanish-like accent.

hot_gril 2y ago

This reminds me of the scene in Toy Story where Buzz Lightyear starts speaking Spanish instead of English. There are two official Spanish dialect dubs of the movie, where he speaks the same language but has a different accent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDZcycnhni0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDZcycnhni0

thrwyexecbrain 2y ago

For me, someone from outside the Anglosphere, the British Empire is a distant and unfamiliar concept. I am always bothered by characters in historical fiction speaking with a British accent just to make an impression of ancientness. The antiquity was not ancient back then -- it was modern for its contemporaries. Rome was as much the dominant economic, cultural and military power of the ancient world as the US is of the present. I would actually prefer American accents being used in movies set in the Roman Empire.

paxys 2y ago

I have found that the only way to live a sane life these days is to just ignore all the culture warriors who show up and start the same tired fight every day. "XYZ should/shouldn't be black/white/asian/gay/straight/trans/irish/accented/disabled/male/female/young/old/tall..." I don't care. If the movie looks interesting to me I'll buy a ticket. You should do the same. Regular people spend way too much time and energy jumping into the pointless debates for no reason thinking they will fix everything, but only amplify the idiocy by giving it attention.